Under the Microscope

Summary

What Happened to Holly Bobo?

Episode: Under the Microscope

Release Date: May 13, 2025

Host: ABC News - Eva Pilgrim

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Introduction

In the episode titled "Under the Microscope," ABC News delves deep into the perplexing case of Holly Bobo, a 20-year-old nursing student who disappeared from her rural Tennessee home nearly 15 years ago. This episode meticulously examines the extensive search efforts, the intense investigation, and the subsequent legal battles that emerged, particularly focusing on the scrutiny faced by Holly's brother, Clint Bobo, and the suspect Terry Britt.

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The Disappearance and Immediate Aftermath

April 20, 2011 marked the night Holly Bobo vanished from her Parsons, Tennessee home. A community rallied together, holding a candlelight vigil amidst a raging storm, symbolizing their collective hope and desperation.

• [00:28] Eva Pilgrim narrates the scene: "The fairgrounds is a large field surrounded by woods... they were here for a different reason, to hold a candlelight vigil for Holly."

The vigil, illuminated by candlelight after a power outage caused by a lightning strike, became a poignant moment captured by the Jackson Sun newspaper, highlighting the community's unwavering search for Holly.

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Massive Search Efforts

From the moment Holly disappeared, the response was immediate and extensive.

• [04:24] Agent Terry Dykis emphasizes the community's involvement: "A few years after Holly's disappearance, people had heard about it and come running to help... searching in the woods."

Multiple agencies collaborated, including the Decatur County Sheriff's Office, Henderson County Sheriff's Office, Lexington PD, FBI, and U.S. Marshals Service. Techniques ranged from deploying search dogs to scouring vast rural terrains, yet the dense woods and unmarked roads posed significant challenges.

• [07:41] Ryan Reynolds (representing an interviewee) remarks: "We can map her phone to the minute, and that's exactly what I did."

Despite the hundreds of volunteers and law enforcement personnel pouring resources into the search, initial efforts yielded minimal evidence, leaving investigators grappling with limited leads and a sprawling, difficult-to-navigate landscape.

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Initial Investigation and the Role of Clint Bobo

As days turned into weeks, the investigation took a deeper look into Holly's immediate circle, particularly her family.

• [12:10] Eva Pilgrim introduces Clint Bobo, Holly's brother, as the sole witness to her disappearance.

Clint underwent a rigorous polygraph test conducted by TBI Agent Valerie Trout.

• [17:30] Clint states during the polygraph: "I didn't do it... I have no idea who did."

His initial cooperation included showing his phone records and allowing body searches, but the police remained vigilant, considering the possibility that Clint might hold more information than he disclosed.

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Emergence of Terry Britt as a Suspect

Amidst a torrent of leads, attention turned to Terry Britt, a local registered sex offender with a troubling history.

• [24:42] Ryan Reynolds introduces Terry Britt: "He had the gravelly voice and he looked like to be in his early 50s... he had dark hair, similar to Clint's description."

Terry Britt's proximity to the Bobo residence and his previous convictions for sexual offenses made him a person of interest. Investigators scrutinized his alibi concerning Holly's disappearance.

• [29:07] Agent Dykus recounts a crucial discovery: "There is no receipt matching his copy."

Despite inconsistencies in Terry's statements and questionable alibis, definitive evidence linking him to Holly's disappearance remained elusive.

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Investigative Challenges and Breakthroughs

The investigation faced several hurdles, including unverified alibis and inconclusive forensic evidence.

• [30:59] Agent John Walker reveals a critical moment: "They said that the hairs were microscopically similar to Holly's."

Although initial hair analysis suggested a connection, further DNA testing disproved this link, casting doubt on Terry Britt's involvement.

Simultaneously, wiretapping efforts provided snippets of Terry Britt's conversations, revealing his frustration and defiance against law enforcement.

• [32:26] Agent Viveros comments on Terry's demeanor: "He said, you know, I wouldn't do something like that."

Despite intense scrutiny, including surveillance and forensic analysis, Terry Britt was ultimately cleared by TBI due to insufficient evidence, leading investigators back to a dead end.

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Impact on the Bobo Family

The prolonged investigation took a significant toll on the Bobo family, especially on Clint Bobo, who faced unwarranted suspicion and public scrutiny.

• [18:36] Clint reflects years later: "I just wish I had known more... I knew my children and knew them well."

Holly's parents, Dana and Karen Bobo, expressed their anguish over their son's ordeal and the added pain of their son's investigation.

• [19:16] Dana Bobo shares: "Watching Clint go through all that was very sad and very hard."

Their trust in the investigative process was shattered as key leads faltered, leaving lingering questions about the true fate of Holly Bobo.

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Conclusion and Ongoing Mysteries

"Under the Microscope" highlights the complexities and frustrations of a high-profile missing person case where even substantial investigative efforts may not yield the desired closure. The episode underscores the enduring pain experienced by Holly's family and the haunting uncertainty that remains decades later.

As the search for answers continues, the case of Holly Bobo remains emblematic of the challenges faced in rural investigations, the impact on families, and the relentless pursuit of justice amidst ambiguity.

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Notable Quotes

• Agent Terry Dykus [03:03]: "We're not going to have tunnel vision to anything or anybody."

• Clint Bobo [14:11]: "I could have got... Grabbed a gun and shot that person."

• Agent Viveros [32:45]: "Those whores are going to try to pin this case on me... I wouldn't do something like that."

• Clint Bobo [18:36]: "I just wish I had known more... I know I knew my children and knew them well."

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Acknowledgments

This episode was produced by ABC Audio, with Eva Pilgrim serving as the host. Special thanks to the investigative teams, family members, and all sources who contributed to uncovering the layers of the Holly Bobo case.

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Note: Portions of the transcript containing advertisements and non-content segments have been omitted to maintain focus on the core narrative of Holly Bobo’s disappearance and the ensuing investigation.

Transcript

[Eva Pilgrim]

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[Ryan Reynolds]

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[Eva Pilgrim]

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[Eva Pilgrim]

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[Eva Pilgrim]

See full [e-mail] on the evening of April 20, 2011, the arena at the Decatur County Fairgrounds in Parsons, Tennessee was packed. Hundreds had gathered there singing this Little Light of Mine, a scene captured by the local Jackson sun newspaper. The fairgrounds is a large field surrounded by woods. Typically, folks gather here for the county fair or the annual raccoon hunt that happened just a few days before Holly Bobo disappeared. But on this night, they were here for a different reason, to hold a candlelight vigil for Holly, the 20 year old woman this community had spent the last week searching for day and night. Outside, a storm was raging which pushed the vigil indoors to a large event space at the fairgrounds. A lightning strike caused the power to go out, so the space was illuminated by the light of hundreds of candles held by a large crowd of volunteers, family and friends. Many wore bright pink shirts or pink ribbons on their jackets since it was Holly's favorite color and the color she was last seen wearing. The Jackson sun recorded a highway patrol officer addressing the crowd.

[Ryan Reynolds]

This is day eight. Y' all are tired. We're frustrated. We ain't brought Holly home yet. We're gonna bring Holly home.

[Eva Pilgrim]

Her parents, who were clearly distraught and shell shocked, had gone before news cameras from local stations like WREG begging for Holly's return. This is her father, Dana Bobo, and her mother, Karen Bobo. The day after she disappeared.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I would tell her I love her. I want her to call us, please, any way she can get in touch with us whatsoever. That's it. Thank you. I just want her back. Thank you.

[Eva Pilgrim]

As the days dragged on, the thousands of volunteers and law enforcement who had poured into tiny Parsons weren't just looking for Holly. They were searching for something, anything that could point to where she was. On storefronts, on street signs, on mailboxes, pink ribbons and pictures of Holly Bobo are posted all over the small, tight knit community of Parsons. Volunteers say they don't plan on stopping until she is found.

[Ryan Reynolds]

It's just unbearable.

[Eva Pilgrim]

I can't hardly Imagine. With Holly still missing and no sign of a suspect, that hope was turning to despair. Law enforcement officials began to change their approach. Inundated with leads that went nowhere, they asked the public not to only look in the woods, but to search among their own.

[Ryan Reynolds]

We feel like the person is right here in the community and we're asking for the community that if you know of anybody that just has changed their routine since Wednesday, that's just acting differently, maybe didn't show up for work or maybe cleaned out a vehicle or tried to sell an atv, that's the type of information today that may help us solve this case. We're not going to have tunnel vision to anything or anybody.

[Eva Pilgrim]

I'm ABC News senior national correspondent Eva Pilgrim. From ABC Audio and 2020, this is what happened to Holly Bobo. Episode 2 Under the microscope One of the things that stood out about this case from the very beginning is how quickly the town and police came together to search for Holly.

[Ryan Reynolds]

When I got there, there were already probably 10 to 12 vehicles.

[Eva Pilgrim]

This is former agent Terry Dykis of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation speaking to ABC News. A few years after Holly's disappearance, people.

[Ryan Reynolds]

That had heard about it and come running to help them, and there were several people out in the yard trying to figure out which way to go, what to do. A lot of people had already started searching in the woods.

[Eva Pilgrim]

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is an independent agency charged with investigating high profile crimes in the state. Larger cities like Memphis or Nashville have their own homicide units and don't always need TBI's help. But Decatur county is one of the most sparsely populated regions in the state with just under 12,000 people.

[Ryan Reynolds]

In rural areas with limited resources, limited manpower, pretty much, they will always call in the tbi.

[Eva Pilgrim]

Agent Dikus was the lead agent on the case. Luckily, he knew Decatur county pretty well, but he says he's never encountered a crime quite like this. It wasn't just TBI that responded to the scene that first day. The Decatur County Sheriff's Office, the Henderson County Sheriff's Office, and the nearby Lexington PD were all there. So were agents with the FBI and US Marshals Service trained in the art of finding people on the run, like Holly's kidnapper. The Tennessee Highway Patrol sent a helicopter to fly overhead. Officials from FEMA helped set up a command post. Many agencies brought dogs along with them to help with the search. Some were given one of Holly's shirts and sent through the woods to pick up her scent. In the first few hours, hundreds of volunteers showed up at the Bobo residence. On their ATVs, on horseback, on foot to search for Holly. As the days went on, divers scoped out the creek and the Tennessee river just a few miles away. You'd think with this huge, rather immediate effort, someone would have figured out what happened to Holly pretty quickly. But this was no ordinary crime scene. The evidence was scant. Some small pools of blood in the carport, presumably Holly's, as well as a shoe print and a still unidentified handprint on her car. They didn't have much to go on. And as agent Dikus points out, we are talking about the middle of nowhere. These are huge stretches of hilly land full of dense trees, Unmarked, sometimes dirt carved roads. There are no main roads anywhere near here. There isn't even a stoplight or caution light. The terrain made it difficult for searchers to keep up the pace. Even the search dogs kept getting stuck in the muddy wilderness. It was almost a perfect metaphor for the Holly Bobo case. Nothing about it would be Easy or straightforward. AT&T mobility, this is Dave.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Dave, this is Judy. I work at the 911 Center, Decatur County, Tennessee. We have got a missing 20 year old female that was pulled away from her home. We need a trace put on her cell phone, please.

[Eva Pilgrim]

One of the first things police did was to try and track Holly's cell phone. This was 2011. Holly's phone didn't have GPS on it. That wasn't a regular feature on phones at the time. But the police could ping it, meaning they could have her service provider send a signal to her phone, which told them which cell tower she was closest to. They couldn't track exactly where she was, but they could tell with those cell phone pings that her phone was still within a few miles. And investigators could later use that data to plot a detailed map of what they said were Holly's movements.

[Ryan Reynolds]

We can map her phone to the minute, and that's exactly what I did.

[Eva Pilgrim]

This is agent John walker of the US Marshals Service. When I met with him in 2024, he unfurled this giant map. It was the map of Holly's movements he began working on in the early days of the investigation. And he's kept it all these years later. Let's look at this map.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Now. This, this information, that is a cell dump of Holly's phone that morning. That means anything that Holly's phone registered on during that that time is on this.

[Eva Pilgrim]

The map shows the area around the Bobo property With cell towers dotted along the woods. Agent Walker went out and bought an exact replica of Holly's Samsung solstice cell phone and drove around the area with a representative from AT&T.

[Ryan Reynolds]

So this starts around 7:45, and it's all the calls and pings on Holly's phone. And you take this and you determine where the tower is based on this first number up here, the last number.

[Eva Pilgrim]

Holly's phone appears to have left her home at around 8am Then the cell phone started moving at a fast pace. Agent Walker believes it was in a vehicle.

[Ryan Reynolds]

This is the Bovill residence. The phone traveled north along this route, traveled about 32, 33 miles an hour north.

[Eva Pilgrim]

Holly's phone heads towards the Interstate 40 highway. Arriving at 8:26am the cell phone appeared to stop moving. It stayed put for about a half hour. Then it turned east onto Interstate 40. A little after 9am it turned right back into those woods and kept traveling south until it got to a small creek on Gooch Road in Parsons. That's when it stopped. Respond to pings at around 9:25am Volunteers who later searched the route found some of Holly's items, including her cell phone.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Essentially, for an hour and a half, her cell phone traveled all through Decadrick County.

[Eva Pilgrim]

Agent Dyka says the map offers another clue that whoever took Holly must have known the area really well.

[Ryan Reynolds]

This is extremely, extremely rural area. You'll go through roads that have one house, then another house three miles down the road, and that's it. We're talking about roads that you can sit out and watch for eight hours, and there's not a car that goes down it. Whoever did this knows these roads because they knew how to go from this point to this point, this point to this point, avoid this bridge, avoid every way that a police officer may come in.

[Eva Pilgrim]

Agent Dykus started drawing up a list of potential leads. Within the first day, investigators identified two dozen sex offenders in the area and went to check on them. But as police cast a wide net, they began to wonder if their suspect was even closer to home.

[Ryan Reynolds]

There were a lot of people that felt Clint was lying, felt very strongly that Clint was lying and that Clint telling the truth would be the secret to solving this case.

[Eva Pilgrim]

Holly Bobo's brother Clint was the sole witness to her disappearance. Police wanted to know whether he should also be considered a suspect.

[Ryan Reynolds]

If you'd like to have a seat right there, that'd be excellent. Okay.

[Eva Pilgrim]

On the evening of his sister's abduction, Clint Bobo agreed to sit for a polygraph test conducted by a TBI agent named Valerie Trout.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Did they mention. Did they talk to you about doing a polygraph? Yeah. Okay. And you asked me, what if I did one? I said no. Okay. Does it offend you in any way? Well, the main thing is that I just, like, I told him I don't want them. I mean, I'm not offended by it. I just want to make sure that everybody is, you know, is really just. He's looked at kind of the same way. Absolutely.

[Eva Pilgrim]

Before they strap Clint up for the polygraph test, Agent Trout spends about 90 minutes asking Clint to walk through what happened earlier that morning when his sister Holly went missing. Throughout the interview, Clint repeats what he's said all day. That he and his sister got along, that he didn't have anything to do with her disappearance, and he had no idea who did.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Anytime you need to stop and take a break, you just speak up, okay? Do you smoke? I am today. I normally don't, but I've got something in my pocket.

[Eva Pilgrim]

At the time, Clint was 25 years old. He was about 5 foot 6, average build, brown hair. He'd been working part time at a local nursing home while studying to get his bachelor's degree in social work at the University of Tennessee Martin. He had no criminal record, and he'd been cooperative all day, showing authorities his phone, having his body searched, and agreeing to do the polygraph. But Clint tells the polygraph examiner that he heard some people were talking about him and about how he hadn't intervened as Holly walked into the woods with someone who turned out not to be her boyfriend. Drew.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I heard something this morning about Clint was there, and he. Or he saw it, and he didn't do anything, but stuff like that just bothering me.

[Eva Pilgrim]

Later on, the polygraph examiner asks him about that.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Do you feel responsible? No. I mean, I don't feel responsible for anything that's happened, but I feel like. I mean, I could have got. Grabbed a gun and shot that person. But you had no idea. I had no idea who that person was. I had no idea who it was. Yeah.

[Eva Pilgrim]

Clint said that a few minutes after he'd been woken up by the family dog, he noticed that Holly's car was still in the garage, even though she was supposed to be in school.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And then that's when I called mom and asked her, is Holly out of school today? And she said, no, she's supposed to be at school. Why? I said, well, her car is here. Did somebody pick her up? My mom automatically, no, somebody's taking. You know, she just went into the panic mode. Right. Then after I told her her car's still here, she said, oh, my God, you know, call 911. Something's happened, but I didn't right away, just that being me. I just didn't do it right away because I wasn't convinced yet that anything. I went over to the window, the only window that leads into our garage where Holly parks her Mustang. And I could see, like, the silhouette, sort of the corner of two people's shirts sitting there. And they were just sitting there talking.

[Eva Pilgrim]

Clint said he believed it was a man and a woman facing each other. This is the description of the male figure that he gave to investigators. About 5 foot 10 or 11, 200 pounds, and a bit larger on top, almost as if he used to work out, but stopped. Clint also described him as having dark hair long enough to cover his neck. He says he didn't recognize the man's voice, but said it sounded gravelly, like a smoker's voice. Clint says he just kept telling himself it must have been Holly's boyfriend Drew taking her turkey hunting. He didn't know what his mom knew, that that man couldn't have been Drew, because that morning, Drew was turkey hunting 22 miles away. Then Clint saw the man and Holly, wearing a bright pink shirt, walk into the woods.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I know that that trail leads to an old logging road down there.

[Eva Pilgrim]

He says at some point, his mom told him over the phone to go grab a gun and shoot the man. After he watched his sister walk away with the man, he says he went and grabbed his dad's.38 Colt Special and started to follow them.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And you went out. Did you actually go on the trail? No, I never did walk on the trail. Not at that time. I just kind of walked up to the edge of the woods, and then I heard someone coming. I heard a vehicle coming, so I walked back down the hill and around the edge of my driveway.

[Eva Pilgrim]

Clint says that's when his neighbor showed up and told him about the scream her son had heard a few minutes before. After an hour and a half long interview, the polygraph examiner straps Clint up to the machine. Time for the moment of truth.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Did you physically cause any injury to your sister? No. Do you know for certain where your sister is now? No. This completes the test. Please remain still.

[Eva Pilgrim]

Clint passed the polygraph test.

[Ryan Reynolds]

That, coupled with the cell phone data, I realized, well, Holly was moving the whole time Clint's been here.

[Eva Pilgrim]

To Agent Dikus, that meant Clint was no longer a suspect. But TBI and other authorities kept an eye on Clint Bobo regardless. In the weeks that followed, he sat for multiple interviews with agents from tbi, the FBI, and the US Marshals service. It wasn't just Clint under the microscope. The entire Bobo family faced years of scrutiny from investigators. But all of them, as well as Holly's boyfriend Drew, were eventually cleared by authorities of having anything to do with Holly's disappearance.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Sometimes people said this to my face. You know, if I had been that brother, I would have went out there. You know, I would have done something well, but they don't understand.

[Eva Pilgrim]

Years later, in 2017, Clint Bobo recounted the experience to ABC News.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I just wish I had known more. I wish I had known that the neighbor called mom at school. I wish I had known that the neighbor heard a scream. I wished I had known that Drew was turkey hunting in Bath Springs. If I had known what was really occurring, I would have certainly reacted totally differently. You know, I know I knew my children and knew them well. Clint was, he was never a suspect in my that thought never entered my mind. And so for anybody.

[Eva Pilgrim]

ABC News also spoke to Holly's mom, Karen, and her father Dana in 2017. For them, the stress on Clinton added to their own pain.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I mean, I just kept in the the back of my mind that, you know, the truth is going to come out someday. But watching Clint go through all that was very sad and very hard. And I did stay angry about that.

[Eva Pilgrim]

A lot because we had lost one.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Child and in a sense I felt like I had lost another child because somebody was trying to take care of the child.

[Eva Pilgrim]

Yes, the way I felt. But Agent Dykas, the initial lead investigator on the Holly Bobo case, had someone else he believed could be involved. Someone who was close by, someone who fit the physical description Clint gave to the police and someone authorities believed had the background, the history of and the M.O. to be Holly's abductor. This message comes from Greenlight. Ready to start talking to your kids about financial literacy? Meet Greenlight, the debit card and money app that teaches kids and teens how to earn, save, spend wisely and invest with your guardrails in place. With Greenlight, you can send money to kids quickly, save, set up chores, automate allowance and keep an eye on your kids spending with real time notifications. Join millions of parents and kids building healthy financial habits together on Greenlight. Get started risk [e-mail] Spotify at Capella University. You can learn at your own pace with our flexpath learning format. Take one or two courses at a time and complete as many as you can in a 12 week billing session. With Flexpath, you can even finish the bachelor's degree you started in 22 months. For $20,000. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at capella.edu. fastest 25% of students. Cost varies by pace, transfer credits and other factors.

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[Eva Pilgrim]

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[Eva Pilgrim]

With an all new season.

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Well, not so friendly. Imagine the opportunity to beat Tom Brady.

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At Sports FX's welcome to Wrexham premieres May 15th on FX stream on Hulu. Within the first three days of the investigation we had hundreds, hundreds and hundreds of leads come up. Everybody called. You need to check out this guy. You need to check out this guy.

[Eva Pilgrim]

It's been many years since Terry Dykus worked on the Holly Bobo case and it's one that still haunts him in part because it set the tone for his final years as an agent of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.

[Ryan Reynolds]

We conducted a thousand interviews, and 25% of them were psychic leaks.

[Eva Pilgrim]

That's right. As the months dragged on, at least 150 people reached out to TBI claiming to be psychics who knew what happened to Holly or told investigators they could help in the search.

[Ryan Reynolds]

But as far as people calling saying, I'm a witness, I saw this, those leads were minuscule. There was all kinds of leads coming in. We were looking at everybody. Everybody was looked at.

[Eva Pilgrim]

Agent John walker with the U.S. marshals Service remembers when one of those leads stood out. When did someone kind of pull away from the rest?

[Ryan Reynolds]

There was a point in the investigation to where the FBI agent and Dykas, the TBI agent, come up with a suspect.

[Eva Pilgrim]

And who was that guy?

[Ryan Reynolds]

That's Terry. Terry Britt. Terry Britt. Right away, he fit the description they clipped I gave.

[Eva Pilgrim]

This is Art Viveros, an FBI special agent who was working with Agent Dikus and Agent Walker on the case. He spoke to ABC News in 2024. He also had his eye on local sex offender Terry Britt.

[Ryan Reynolds]

It was about 5, 10, 11. He had the gravelly voice and he looked like to be in his early 50s. It looked like he had had a build at one time. He had a little belly there, 5.

[Eva Pilgrim]

Foot 10 or 11. Gravelly voice, larger build. He also had dark hair, similar to Clint's description of the man who walked away with Holly. Remember that list of more than two dozen sex offenders in Decatur county, the one police compiled the day Holly went missing? Terry Britt was on that list.

[Ryan Reynolds]

He had a long, long history of sexual crimes. In fact, he spent most of his life in prison. And I think he had gotten out maybe just a couple years before the event.

[Eva Pilgrim]

Terry Britt had first been convicted of rape back in 1977. Since then, he'd been convicted once more of rape, of sexual battery, and most recently of attempt to commit rape. At the time Holly went missing, he was out of prison, a registered sex offender living only about eight miles from the Bobos, not far from the creek where some of her belongings were found, according to a Decatur county police report. When police spoke to Terry Britt the day of Holly's disappearance, he told them that he'd woken up at 6am and his wife woke up at 8,30ish. Then he told the officer they left to go to a nearby town to buy supplies for remodeling the house. The officer who checked on Terry Britt reports having seen him and his wife unloading a tub from a truck. A couple of months later, Agent Vivaros decided to go talk to Terry Brittany again.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Brit's house was a single wide trailer, old, kind of run down, and looked like he had done a lot of work himself. He'd made a carport and he had maybe four vehicles out there. Two Dodge Caravans, a pickup truck, a white panel van, you know. So we knocked on the door, identified ourselves, and inside the single wide was Terry Britt. And I remember he was wearing white, as they call them, white beaters, I think, shorts and tennis shoes.

[Eva Pilgrim]

Witnesses told police at the time that Terry Britt had shoulder length hair for years, which would have aligned with what Clint Bobo says he saw the day Holly was abducted. When Agent Vivaros interviewed Terry Britt two months after Holly's disappearance, he said his hair was shorter. But authorities can't confirm exactly when Terry Britt cut his hair.

[Ryan Reynolds]

We started talking and we identified ourselves and why we were there to talk about the disappearance of Holly Bubble, where he was that morning. He said Janet would explain everything, what happened that morning.

[Eva Pilgrim]

Let me call Janet, as in his wife, Janet Britt. She came home. During the interview, Terry Britt said he and Janet were together the morning of Holly's abduction. He said they were shopping at a local appliance store for a new bathtub.

[Ryan Reynolds]

You got a receipt? Yes. Let's look at it, if you don't mind. He said, well, that's in the safe. She had kept that receipt in the safe.

[Eva Pilgrim]

While Vivaros found it suspicious, Janet explained that she always keeps receipts in case they were needed for financial reasons. And Terry Britt said he did not know of Holly Bobo until the morning of her abduction. When it hit the news, Agent Dikus wanted to check out Britt's alibi. He says he went to the store where the Brits said they'd bought the bathtub enclosure. Agent Dykus says he got all the carbon copies of the receipts from that week.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I went to that place where he supposedly got it and they have carbon copies of the receipt and there is no receipt matching his copy.

[Eva Pilgrim]

According to Dykus notes, an employee told Dykus the store didn't have surveillance footage and that the store didn't keep receipts by customer name. The person also told Dykus that he wasn't sure if Britt was in the store that day, but he recognized his face and said he'd come in several times. Britt has insisted he was with his wife the whole day, but investigators claim they found phone records that show Britt calling his wife three times that afternoon. We reached out to Terry and Janet Brittany, but didn't get a response. The FBI and TBI secured a search warrant on the house and brought trained dogs to scour his property. They were looking for the smell of human decomposition. According to the police, the dogs went around his backyard and through his cars. Police say the dogs alerted detectives to some tools as well as two of Britt's vehicles, but testing showed there was no DNA or blood there. Britt said he doesn't know why the dogs would have picked up on the scent of human decomposition and continued to deny any involvement. Authorities also found some hairs on his property and in his cars. They sent the hairs to the FBI's crime lab in Quantico, Virginia, along with samples from Holly's hairbrush for comparison. This is when investigators believed that maybe they finally had what they needed to get Holly's kidnapper. Agent walker with the U.S. marshals Service explains what happened when the results came back from the crime lab.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And they said that the hairs were microscopically similar to Holly's.

[Eva Pilgrim]

According to an FBI report, investigators determined hair found in the debris among Britt's GMC van and hair in the debris from rope found inside his Dodge Caravan, quote, exhibit the same microscopic characteristics, unquote, as hair found in Holly's hairbrush. The FBI report did not say what exactly those characteristics were, but this kind of test is usually a precursor to a more precise DNA test. And when they tested further, they found the hairs were not a DNA match to Holly. When asked about the hair with the same characteristics as Holly's, Terry Britt said, I don't see how that's possible. He did say his sister also had blonde hair, but he insisted he'd never met Holly Bobo. The investigators leading the case continued looking into Terry Britt. They wanted to know what he might say when he wasn't speaking with the police.

[Ryan Reynolds]

The FBI is well known for doing wiretaps, and TBI had never done that before. So this is going to be the first wiretap.

[Eva Pilgrim]

FBI agent Art Viveros remembers listening in on Terry Britt's phone calls as he helped TBI with this effort.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I overheard Terry Britt receive a call from his sister, but he gets off the phone.

[Eva Pilgrim]

TVI had bugged the Britt house as well. Agent Vivaros recalls hearing Britt talking to who he believes was Janet shortly after, right there in the room.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And he says, those whores, meaning law enforcement, those whores are going to try to pin this case on me, the Holly Broba case on me. He says, I didn't know the. You know. And he used the profanity to describe Holly. And he says, you know, I wouldn't do something like that. I didn't know exactly who he was talking to, but I assumed it was Janet. He said, you know, I wouldn't do something like that.

[Eva Pilgrim]

But agents couldn't confirm it was Janet he was speaking to. And ultimately, the suspicions that Britt might own up to something in private were fruitless. He did not confess, and there was no smoking gun. At one point, Agent Dikus brought recordings of voice samples to Clint to see if he could identify the gravelly male voice he said he heard in the garage. Clint was able to narrow them down to two different voices. He says he thought they sounded very similar. TBI said one of those voices was Terry Britt's. Agent Dikus kept trying to get a confession from Britt.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I believe this was probably the second or third time I talked to him. So he's kind of opened up to me a little bit.

[Eva Pilgrim]

In 2012, Terry Britt was sent back to prison after pleading guilty to attempted rape and kidnapping in a separate case. Agent Dikus went to go visit him and recorded the conversation. Britt later said that he wasn't aware DYKUS was recording. Britt continued to deny any involvement in Holly's disappearance and said he had an alibi. But the two talked about Britt's own criminal history and his thoughts on the Bobo case. Terry Britt began to speculate about how someone might have committed this crime.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Like you said before, she's young, pretty, perfect, somewhat body. Yeah, okay. Like a toy, some people would think.

[Eva Pilgrim]

He started musing about what the abductor's motive might be.

[Ryan Reynolds]

If he's doing it for himself, for his own benefit, and he's gonna go snatch her up, he can't wait to get her to wherever he's gonna take her to because he's wanting that body, right? All right. He's gonna make mistakes along the way. I mean, he's got to make some mistakes. Okay, he's got her and do what he wants to do with timber, with her, whatever. But when he gets done, that's when reality sets in. See, right now it's just fantasy world, right? But here comes reality now. I've got a body. What am I gonna do with it? Cause if you keep it, you gotta feed it, right? You gotta hide it. And if you kill it, what are you gonna do with it? I could be wrong, but the way I took it is he's real, living the story, and when he gets to the point where she's no longer alive, he changes from talking about her as a person to talk about her as an.

[Eva Pilgrim]

At this point, 16 months had passed since Holly's disappearance. Despite efforts by TBI and FBI, they were unable to find evidence to charge Terry Britt. And within tbi, there was now disagreement. Agent Dykus superiors felt like he had tunnel vision and thought they should look at other suspects. Ultimately, Terry Britt was cleared by tbi, which meant investigators were back to square one and under increasing pressure to find answers.

[Ryan Reynolds]

It was a case where you have a nightmare every single night. And every day when you get up, you run as fast as you can and run into a brick wall.

[Eva Pilgrim]

That's next time on what Happened to Holly Bobo? What Happened to Holly Bobo is a production of ABC Audio in 2020. Hosted by me, Eva Pilgrim. The series was produced by Camille Peterson, Julia Nutter, Kiara Powell, Nora Hanna and Meg Fierro, with help from Audrey Mostek and Amira Williams. Our supervising managing producer is Susie Lu. Music and mixing by Evan Viola. Special thanks to Liz Alessi, Janice Johnston, Michelle Margulaz, Sean Dooley, Christina Corbin, Kieran McGurl, Andrew Paparella, and Emma Pisha. Josh Cohan is our director of podcast programming. Laura Mayer is our executive producer. Yeah, the NBA playoffs are here and it's about to be Ridiculous, Unbelievable, unfair, downright nasty, straight up, can't miss, don't.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Blink, Grab your popcorn and strap in.

[Eva Pilgrim]

Cinema.

[Ryan Reynolds]

This isn't about who's next.

[Eva Pilgrim]

This is about who's now. This time it's different. The NBA playoffs presented by Google. Continue on espn, abc.